The present invention is in the field of tent and tarp type shelters used by hikers and campers.
Hikers and backpackers usually require a shelter such as a tent for overnight or multi-night trips. The longer the trip, the greater the need for a shelter of as little packed weight as possible to reduce fatigue, to make room for food and other gear in the pack, and to increase the enjoyment of hiking.
Tents tend to be one of the heaviest items in the pack. The typical modern tent is a sturdy, freestanding dome or paraboloid shelter. When two or more long, removable, sectioned poles are inserted into canopy sleeves, and tensioned into arches with the pole ends locked into the corners of a bathtub style waterproof floor to lift the canopy, the tent is “freestanding”, meaning it will stand on its own without being staked down (although the tent is almost always staked down for wind security after the initial freestanding setup). The primary drawback of freestanding tents is their weight, with a minimum of two long, relatively heavy poles and a floor designed to form a structural base for the poles and arched canopy.
Some double-walled freestanding tents are offered with a “fastpack” option, in which the main tent body can be left at home while the arch poles are used to tension just the rainfly portion of the tent over a detachable floor. This arrangement is lighter than the full double-walled tent combination, but still requires multiple arch poles, and loses the protection of the insect netting of the main tent body.
Some hikers opt for lighter, non-freestanding shelters that must be staked out in order to reduce weight from their packs. Examples of non-freestanding tents include nylon pyramids, pole-supported tarps, my Tarptent™ shelters, and several single-pole hoop designs from companies such as Sierra Designs (Asteroid model), Montbell (Monoframe model), and Hilleberg (Akto model). The pyramids and tarp shelters typically use one or more relatively short, lightweight, upright poles for structural support, and even more weight can be saved by substituting an already-carried trekking pole or hiking stick for an upright pole. The single-pole hoop designs use only a single arch pole, typically bisecting the tent, and must be staked down and/or guyed out with tensioning lines for the single arch to stand unsupported.
While single-pole shelter designs are lighter, many backpackers still choose heavier multi-pole freestanding tents for their ease and speed of setup, their greater headroom, the ability to move them around a campsite fully set up, and for their generally greater structural stability.